Secrets Revealed
by LadyHorror92
Summary: Their feelings for each other have been denied so as to protect the other from the implications of such a relationship, but when events occur that reveal secrets of their true heritage, Hansel and Gretel's worlds are turned upside down, and Hansel struggles with the reality that his family was never his at all as a new threat comes to tear them apart... Hansel/Gretel, NOT incest.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: ***_**This was taken down for some pretty stupid reasons, but for the time it was best that it be taken down. I'd written a few chapters on my boyfriend's computer, but we ended up breaking-up and he refused to give me the chapters I had saved (along with my stereo and flat-screen TV), and claimed that because he "gave me the idea for a Gretel/Hansel" fanfic that meant he owned the story". I tried telling him that it is just a story and that it was ridiculous to have some custody battle over it like it's some kid, but he threatened to make some bogus complaint to Fanfiction about me not owning it, or that he's offending by the content, or whatever excuse they'd take unless I took this and "Resisting Temptation" down. So, to play nice and get all my things back, I took both this and the one-shot down. Thank God, he finally gave me everything back and dropped the issue with the stories. Now both are back and in-progress once again.**_

_**In retrospect, I'm glad he only raised a stink with this fandom and none of my other Fanfiction stuff, but I really am sorry about taking it down. Understand that I got sick of him making ridiculous threats and yelling in my ear about it all. I'm going to add each chapter that was already posted every few days to get the word out that it's back, then I'll update regularly with new chapters.*  
**_

_**Reading Hansel/Gretel fics is a guilty pleasure of mine, but the notion of writing an incestuous relationship made me a bit uneasy, just as reading it admittedly makes me feel a tad weird (I'm sure at least a few people feel the same way).**_

_**So, I've found a way around that. This fic can be considered a sequel of sorts to the movie, in which Hansel and Gretel are a part of a prophesy and have been led to believe that they are siblings when in reality they aren't as related as they think.**_

_**And just a heads up, Hansel and Gretel will make an actual appearance in the next chapter. This chapter is basically the prelude that will explain what's going on, and involves Adrianna, her husband (his name was never mentioned so I've named him Philip).**_

_**There's horror, language, sexual content, pretty much all of the above. **_

**Disclaimer: **_**I don't own Hansel & Gretel. If I did, this fic would be a movie, not fanfiction.**_

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_**~Prologue~**_

If there was one thing Adrianna always wanted, it was a child, but ever since she was a little girl she felt it was beyond her grasp. Being born a witch came with its disadvantages, and though her mother had found love, it had been unlikely that she would as well. In recent years, the prosecution of witches had increased to the point where all someone had to do was point a finger at a woman and cry witch. Sometimes there was a trial, sometimes there was not. Dark witches cared little of prosecution since few could stand in their way, but white witches feared the day someone came knocking on their door with the threat of execution.

But love did find Adrianna on the day she used her white magic to aid in healing a farmer's failing crops. She'd seen Philip before, seen how hard he worked, and how he suffered when rain did not come and famine swept through the whole area. It was risky, exposing herself to help him, but she was a compassionate, selfless woman and often went out of her way to aid others. Thankfully, luck favored her and rather than cry witch, Philip was made curious by how she was still beautiful and kind whilst being a witch. It wasn't long before they married, and two days ago she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl whom they named Gretel.

Gretel would carry on Adrianna's legacy and inherit the abilities of a grand white witch, but would also be forced to carry the burden of being a witch once she came to practice the arts. Most humans believed there were only evil witches in the world, and thus held no love for them.

Arms wrapped themselves around her waist, pulling her from her thoughts, and the grand white witch smiled as she leaned back against her husband's chest.

"What are you thinking about?"

"About the day we met," she replied softly, her voice almost unheard over the rain pouring outside. Smiling, she added, "I never knew a man could be so flustered and lose his tongue in the presence of a woman."

He chuckled, pressing a kiss to her hair. "Pardon me if I was under the impression that all witches were rotting, ugly beings. You and your spell caught me off guard."

Adrianna said nothing in return, only smiled brightly while watching their baby sleep, emotions of happiness and guilt flowing through her veins.

The powers of a grand white witch could be seen as a blessing, and heaven knew that Adrianna saw them as one. With such powers, countless humans could be helped, crops could prosper, and the forest could flourish. So much good could come from being a grand white witch, but there was also a catch for Gretel, if the crescent shaped birthmark on the back of her right shoulder was any indication.

There was a sudden pounding at the door, followed by a loud clap of thunder, and the couple started, shocked from the musings.

Walking towards the door, Philip retrieved his rifle before opening it to see who was out there. Not a second later, he opened the door fully to allow the soaking wet woman inside, her broom in one hand and a bundle of blankets in her free arm.

"Tabitha?" Adrianna started, staring at her fellow white witch then to her broom. "Are you mad? What if someone saw you flying around?"

"They'd look for a hideous hag, not a blond," she replied, teeth chattering as she dropped her broom to hold the bundle of blankets close.

Curious, Adrianna approached and peered down at the soaking blankets.

Answering the unsaid question, the young woman handed the bundle off to her.

The grand white witch started when the blankets moved, and when she pulled them back a bit she gasped loudly and hurried to the table. "Philip, get me a clean blanket!" she requested in a rush, freeing the baby from the sopping wet blankets to hold close to her chest.

Gaping at the baby, he nodded and rushed to grab the quilt from their bed.

The baby was cold to the touch and filthy, but otherwise looked rather healthy in Adrianna's eyes and she cradled him as she would Gretel, her heart going out to the helpless infant. Never would she turn anyone away, let alone a baby, but the questioned as to why Tabitha was in possession of a baby when she'd never been pregnant still hung in the air.

Rather than offer up any explanation while Adrianna and Philip tended to the boy, Tabitha removed her coat and retrieved a sheet to wrap around her shoulders as she shivered, helping herself to a cup of freshly brewed tea.

Last Adrianna saw her was ten days ago when she came to assist her in the birth of Gretel. She'd looked fine then, but now the young woman looked exhausted, as if she hadn't slept for hours. It was very likely as she hadn't seeing as the ride by broom from her cottage was a good six hours. Something had happened between then and now, and Tabitha would not have a baby with her without reason.

"Where is he from?" asked Philip.

"A house near a town called Luxinburg," she chattered, sipping her tea. Nervously, she added, "The mother… she doesn't know he's here."

Adrianna gaped. "You _stole _a baby? My God, what were you thinking? What could justify snatching a child from their mother like some dark witch?"

"Because the mother is a dark witch!"

Words left the woman's throat and she stared at Tabitha in a mixture of shock, confusion, and disbelief.

Shakily directing her cup of tea towards the baby, Tabitha instructed, "Look at his right shoulder."

Adrianna gently shifted the baby in her arms while her husband pulled down the quilt enough to expose his shoulder. Visible beneath the filth, was a crescent birthmark, and the raven haired woman's jaw fell slack in realization, understanding who she was holding, _what _she was holding.

"That's the same birthmark as Gretel's," observed Philip, completely baffled.

Adrianna, however, didn't hear him and continued to stare at the infant.

"While passing through Luxinburg, I heard a whisper that a man heard the cries of a newborn baby while hunting deep in the woods," explained Tabitha, watching her friend and the baby through her dripping hair. "I was curious so I asked around, and roughly nine months ago men began going missing, never to be seen again. Because dark witches generally seek only children, their absence was blamed on the animals or bandits. With the rumor of a baby, however, their suspicions began to change, and some believed that perhaps the witches were using the men for something else. There was also talk of a withered house far from the town that people stayed away from, and so I decided to investigate.

No one was home when I arrived, so I stepped inside and it was clearly the home of a dark witch, and the bones of dozens of men were felt to hold dust in a corner. That's when I found the baby and the makeshift birth certificate created for him."

Sighing, Adrianna asked, "Let me guess – he was born the same day as Gretel?"

She nodded. "If I were to guess the time, I'd say in the very same hour. When I saw the birthmark, I knew, and that is why I took him. I… I didn't have choice, I couldn't let him remain there with a dark witch."

"You did the right thing," Adrianna assured her quietly, stepping to a bucket of water to dampen a cloth and clean the baby up.

"I don't understand," comment Philip, frustrated and confused. "Why is it right that she stole an infant, and how can he be the son of a witch? I thought you could only have girls?"

"Boys are very rare, almost unheard of," Adrianna explained, glancing at her husband. "White witches accept this as the natural order of things, but there is a prophesy that dates back to the earliest coven of witches that makes dark witches almost desperate for male offspring."

Leaning on his hands against the table, he repeated, "A prophesy?"

She nodded.

"The same one you insist Gretel to be a part of?"

"Yes," she confirmed. She'd only told him fragments of the prophesy, the parts that involved Gretel alone, but had left out quite a bit to keep him from fearing for their daughter's safety. Now, however, she had no choice but to share with him the facts. "I told you that the crescent birthmark was a symbol of the female white witch from the prophecy who would be a light in the darkness and be the most powerful white witch the world has ever seen upon learning the trade – stronger than even myself and all other white witches put together."

"Yes, I remember," he said with a nod, with her so far.

"Well, what I failed to mention is that there is a darker side to the prophesy."

"Darker being an understatement," Tabitha mumbled, promptly receiving a glare from Adrianna. "Sorry."

Continuing on from Tabitha's interruption, she said, "The prophesy is one of opposites – a boy and a girl, good and evil, but born in the same hour during the crescent moon with the same birthmarks of the crescent. On the night the girl on the side of good is born, a boy will be born into evil. Because male witches are typically only conceived by dark female witches, they are almost always raised to be dark witches themselves, but they are distinctly different from their female counterparts – for some reason, the signs of a dark witch do not manifest physically on the men, and thus they could look as normal as you, Philip."

"All right," he said slowly, struggling to process what all she was revealing to him. "So, I'm assuming that because Gretel will be the most power white witch, this boy will become the most powerful dark witch?"

"Yes, that's right. Alone he could bring about a darkness that no one should dare even think about, which is why dark witches will regularly abduct and… use men so they can conceive a child because understandably no man would dare lie with a dark witch willingly. Most of the time girls are born, but when a boy is born he is immediately submitted to violence and horror and cruelty in order to instill a sense of evil into him whether he bares the mark or not. More often than not, boys are doomed to a life of evil from the start."

"Then why bring him here?" he demanded of Tabitha, voice raised, and then he turned his eyes back to his wife. "Why not be rid of the thing if he's so dangerous? Let us stop this prophesy from taking hold from the start and keep Gretel from harm!"

"He has a chance to be good, Philip!" insisted Tabitha, rising to her feet, shakes subsiding. "Alone, they are the strongest of both sides, but together they will be a force to be reckoned with! That is what the prophesy predicts! Tell him, Adrianna!"

"Philip, she's right," she confirmed with a nod, dropping the cloth to hold her husband's rough hand. "If their paths cross and they go down the path of good and white magic, they will do unimaginable good and defeat dark witches, trolls, and the demons of the world in numbers that no mere human or white witch could do on their own. The exact opposite will happen if they go down a path of evil."

Philip said nothing for several seconds and scratched at his beard, at his neck, and ran his fingers through his hair as he struggled to comprehend the situation they'd found themselves in. "The boy… if he stays here, if he's raised by us, he won't pose a threat to Gretel?"

"None whatsoever, of that I can promise you," she replied sincerely.

"And what do we say about him?"

At that Adrianna hesitated, unsure.

"Fabricate a birth certificate for him," offered Tabitha. "Claim that they are twins. I mean, no one is away that you've given birth yet, right?"

She nodded. "Yes… yes, we'll do that. They'll be raised as brother and sister, and once they come of age where they can understand the levity of their situation, I will tell them the truth. The prophesy is old, but very clear that they will not be siblings because one will be born of light and the other of darkness. By claiming they are merely twins, they'll be safe."

Philip remained silent.

"Philip, please," Adrianna begged. "Trust me on this. If you makes you more comfortably, once Gretel is older I will cast a spell on her to render her immune to dark magic."

"And the boy?" he question uncertainly. "Will you cast the same one on him?"

She shook her head. "There's no need. Just as a white witch is immune to a fellow white witch's magic lest the spell is cast or potion is created by a white witch in the family, a dark witch is immune to dark magic produced by someone other than family. It is better to protect Gretel from dark magic, than to protect to boy from white magic."

Before Philip could comment, Gretel's cries rose from the other room upon being woken from a loud clap of thunder. Sighing, he went to pick up his baby girl to provide some comfort from the harsh noise coming from outside, but she refused to stop crying. There were some nights where she would scream and scream for seemingly no reason at all, and it left the new parents tired from many sleepless nights.

Returning to Adrianna, he intended to exchange infants since she seemed to be able to calm their daughter better, when the baby boy opened his eyes upon hearing Gretel's cries. But rather than start crying, he made a few soft noises then fell silent, staring at the baby girl with big grey eyes.

With her doe eyes red rimmed from crying, Gretel eventually looked at the boy and her cries slowly ceased, and their focus remained on each other in a way that shouldn't happen with infants.

Adrianna smiled at how the baby boy seemed to calm Gretel, and even Philip appeared touched.

After a few seconds of just watching the two babies, Philip sighed and nodded. "Twins, then? That is what we tell them?"

She nodded.

"All right, love. If you are so certain of this, I won't argue with you, but later I would like to know more of this prophesy so I know what we can expect," he said tiredly. Looking to the boy, he asked, "What should we call him?"

Adrianna thought for a long moment, unsure and searching her mind for names that would fit such a special boy. Perhaps a family name, something with good attached to it, or the name of a family friend. No, that wouldn't do. Then it occurred to her and she smiled.

"There was a male white witch in the cover who discovered foretold the prophesy. It's said that he was the first white witch to be born male, and he went on to do tremendous good," she said, smiling softly at the exchange.

A slight smile tugged at Philip's lips. "Sounds like the name could bring good luck. What is it?"

"Hansel," she replied quietly, rocking the baby gently while Philip did the same with Gretel. "His name was Hansel."

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_**Please, Review! Reviews let me know that you wish for more!  
**_


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: _Sorry for the delay, still dealing with ex issues along with a new job. There's a bit of chaos going on in my life right now, but with any luck things should start simmering down which will allow me to focus more fully on this fic as well as my others.  
_**

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"And I thought Augsburg was bad," Hansel commented dryly, surveying the dank, smelly town of Luxinburg that he and Gretel had found themselves in.

After delivering the bodies of the desert witches and claiming their payment, they caught wind of the towns request for help in getting rid of a dark witch who was routinely stealing multiple children over the past few months until there were only thirteen kids left when there had originally been over twenty-three. Witches were generally opportunistic when stealing children, doing so out of convenience as opposed to venturing into town. Children who went out for a walk in the woods, got lost, or were left unattended were perfect targets, not kids safe in their homes. Something was making the dark witch tormenting Luxinburg take greater risks, and after dealing with Muriel during the blood moon in Augsburg, Hansel was acutely wary of what they may face.

"I'd say we've seen worse places," Gretel began, frowning as a fat rat scurried past her boots with no fear of her at all, disappearing into a rotting mound of trash. "But I can't say that we have."

"I wasn't talking about the filth," he sighed, looking at the withdrawn faces of the people they passed.

His sister wore an expression of empathy for those her were suffering from the loss of so many children as of late. It was as if they were just waiting for the next kid to be taken, which they probably were. The paper that had been sent out to dozens of towns requesting Hansel and Gretel's help gave a pretty specific time-frame in which kids were being taken, and more could be expected to be snatched within the week.

Hansel cared little about the adults and their suffering. In his experience, townsfolk tended to make things worse by getting themselves killed trying to take on dark witches or were just too foolish to do the right thing – calling him and Gretel. Most of all, almost always he and his sister were looked down on, spoken of as legends, but looked at with crossed eyes because of their way of living. Gretel took the brunt of the abuse being that she was a woman whom insisted on being treated as an equal to men. While other women were dresses and let men lead, she wore tight leather pants, wielded weapons, and insisted on doing the leading a majority of the time. Hansel loved her for her independence, but other men tended to judge her negatively because of it, resulting in her quickly putting them in their place if they pushed her buttons, and Hansel was happy to let her teach them a lesson.

Only a few times did he need to step in to prevent her from getting hurt, and there were a few instances where he wasn't there to help her. Five times had he found her bloody and bruised from a fight that she had not gone looking for, and each time his blood boiled while he held her close as she assured him she was okay. The time that stood out in his mind was after the attack on Augsburg where she'd been ambushed by Sheriff Berringer and his goons, resulting in her having a split lip, cut cheek and forehead, and a severely bruised side from where she'd been kicked. It was something that she preferred not to talk about, and that made him feel all the more guilty.

And what had Hansel been doing while she was being beaten that made him feel so guilty?

He'd been screwing Mina in a pond, putting lust he felt in the moment above Gretel. That guilt still raged inside him for what had happened to her, the woman he loved more than he could ever love anyone else.

Tossing a sideways glance to the dark haired woman walking beside him, he sighed, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from her lest she look and see the emotion behind them. The love he felt for his sister was far from appropriate, something that a brother definitely shouldn't feel for his sister, but he couldn't help it. All he could do was keep his feelings and desires locked inside if only to keep from condemning his sister by taking her as his and only his. He just wished she wasn't so beautiful and didn't have her amazing personality – that would make resisting her so much easier.

Gretel backhanded his arm suddenly, forcing his focus back to what was going on, and he looked at her. "What?"

"I was saying," she started, slightly irritated as she looked on him with a note of concern for his spacing out on her. "That we should hurry and find the mayor so we can get started. We still have a few hours before sunset, plenty of time to get a little work done. And I'm sure Ben would appreciate it if we got a room at the inn sooner rather than later. I can't imagine he's enjoying spending time alone with Edward."

He snorted. "Yeah, God forbid the kid's uncomfortable."

"Why do you give him such a hard time?" she demanded. "He's been a great help to us."

"You're right, he has been helpful," he admitted grudgingly, ignoring the looks he and Gretel were receiving as they walked through the crowd of townsfolk. "But excuse me if I don't like having a fan with us around the clock. It's like he's living some twisted dream by following us around."

Gretel smiled, shaking her head. "He's a teenager. It's perfectly normal for him to have a role model, even if those role models are us."

"There's normal, there's what we do, and then there's Ben," he commented dryly. "Having a few newspaper clippings is one thing, but that kid put together a whole scrapbook dedicated to us and constantly yaps about how he's painted pictures of you and shit. And the way he follows you around? I swear, if I didn't keep the kid on a leash he'd be trying to hump your leg."

At that, Gretel laughed. "He's not nearly that bad, Hansel."

"Yeah, whatever. Just know that if he tries to sneak off while you're bathing again, I'm killing him."

She said nothing, only gave him a soft look that he couldn't read, but he didn't ask her to explain.

One thing about him that would never change was his need to keep men – and boys, in Ben's case – away from Gretel. Once they crossed the border of being decent into the valley of flirting, he became irritated with their mere presence and made it clear that she was off limits. It wasn't just because he was his brother looking out for his younger twin, but because he as a man didn't want someone else touching her when he loved her so much. He wasn't a fool though, and he knew that if Gretel truly wanted to she'd find a way to be with someone whether he approved or not.

After asking where the mayor's office was, the two made their way to the man who would give them a clearer picture of what all was going on in town with the dark witch and missing children. Whatever was happening, they needed to work fast if they were going to have any chance of finding the kids alive.

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"Ah, you must be Gretel and Hansel," greeted Mayor Albert Worthington. "Thank you so much for coming. I feared you would never get my request for help. Though I must say, I wish you'd have come sooner."

"We came as quickly as we could," Gretel replied apologetically, shaking his hand while Hansel walked around.

"Well, better late than never, I suppose," he said with a pained smile that didn't reach his eyes. Adjusting his coat, the mayor took as seat, extending his hand towards the two chairs across from his desk.

Gretel accepted his invitation and took a seat while Hansel stood beside her, picking up one of the papers off the desk to look at. She wished he would just sit down and be polite once in a while. While she was like a velvet glove when dealing with officials unless they gave her a reason to be a bitch, Hansel was like an iron fist who wanted to know what was going on and where the witch was so he could just go out and kill it. He didn't want to "waste time" with being nice when they could just get right to work in some form.

"So, you say ten children have been taken within the past four months?" she asked, looking through the documents he'd put together for them.

He nodded. "This year, yes."

Gretel raised her head from one of the papers. "This year?"

"How many kids in total of been taken?" Hansel asked, crossing his arms.

Worthington shifted uncomfortable, handing them a very thick book. "Children of various ages have been taken periodically every year for the past twenty-nine years."

Hansel stared at the man in a mixture of disbelief and anger. "Twenty-nine years? And you've only _now _decided to ask for our help? Why haven't you sent out a search party to hunt down the witch?"

Generally, Gretel disagreed with townsfolk going after dark witches because rarely did they understand what they were up against, but in this case she had to admit that it might have been better for them to grab the torches and guns and go searching for the dark witch. This had been going on periodically for twenty-nine years, something Gretel hadn't heard of before. Surely they should have felt enough anger and fear to rid themselves of the threat by now.

"We tried to find the witch, but…" Worthington sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Twenty-five years ago we had enough, and my father – mayor at the time – rounded up the whole town to search for the witch against his dear friend's protests. There's a cottage out there that he believed housed the witch, so that was where they all went. The next night, the witch paid us a visit with my father's head impaled on the end of her broom. She said that she put a curse on our crops and that if we did not leave her be to carry out the work that needed to be done, she'd kill us all quite painfully and take our children anyways. So, she gave us a choice – for the first handful of months a year, she'd come and take the children of her choosing but no more than half of what we have, and in exchange the curse that would fall on our crops during that time would be lifted at the end of the time period, and if we had too few children she would skip over... harvesting them for that year. If we killed her, the curse would remain and all of us would die. In light of the situation, I was elected as mayor, and when she returned to hear my decision… I had to think of everyone, so I agreed to her terms." Burying his haggard face in his hands, he shook his head. "I thought I was doing what was best for my town, but last week my daughter was taken by the witch."

"Guess it takes your own kid being murdered to get your ass moving," Hansel accused bitterly.

"Hansel," Gretel started, but he put his hands on the mayor's desk angrily, openly ignoring her.

"You've been letting little kids get taken and _eaten _for twenty-nine fucking years, and now when it's daughter who is in danger you decide it has to stop?" he demanded, voice dangerously low. "What about all those other kids?"

"Hansel!" Gretel snapped, grabbing his forearm. "What matters is that we're here now."

Her brother huffed angrily but said nothing else on the matter for now, pushing away from the desk with a few papers to look over.

Gretel sighed, but she couldn't really blame him when he said what she herself was feeling. So many kids over the years had been taken while nothing had been done to stop it. The town might have been in danger of starving or being killed entirely, but the kids… She remembered how terrified she'd been when her and Hansel were held in the house made of candy, how guilty she felt for readying the fire while the witch forced her brother to eat pounds of candy until he actually threw up before making him eat some more, resulting in him now having the sugar sickness. They'd been lucky enough to get away, but so very few kids were as luck as they were and rarely got away without their help.

But while she understood why Hansel was so angry, she had to remain levelheaded if she was going to get anywhere with the mayor and everyone else. "I'm sure you were doing what you thought was best," she paused to glare at Hansel when he snorted in disagreement, then continued, "Now, you said there was a cottage in the woods where you believed this witch was?"

He nodded shakily, taking a drink of the alcohol he had in a glass. "Off to the East, yes, but rumor is that she no longer resides there, if she ever did. I went there once a few days after the deal was made and it appeared that the place had been virtually abandoned for years. It was without a doubt the home of a witch, but it was as if something forced her away suddenly."

"What makes you think that?"

"I'm no expert on witches, but there were so many things there that I'd have thought would have been taken, and things that were just downright strange, leaving me to suspect that something frightened her away," he explained, unrolling a map for her to look at. "There were also some things there that I would not suspect to be in the possession of a witch."

"Such as?" Gretel asked.

"There were... baby items," he replied. "Never did she take our infants, so I'm left to assume that she took them from another town, but I wasn't aware that they took infants."

Hansel frowned, glancing at Gretel. "They normally don't, but it's not unheard of."

It was, however, very disconcerting, and Gretel didn't like the thought of a little baby being eaten. In fact, it made her stomach churn a bit.

"Either way, it would be a place to start," sighed the mayor, tapping his finger on the location on the map. "I left everything intact for fear of angering the witch further, so perhaps you'll find something I missed. It's only an hours hike from town, so you should be back long before dark."

"Sounds like a plan," Gretel agreed, rolling the map back up to take with them to bring with them on their journey.

"And when you've returned, you should speak with Tabitha, my father's friend that I mentioned who warned him not to go," the mayor added. "She's what you would call our local expert on witches."

Hansel looked over to him. "And how did she become such an expert?"

The mayor said nothing for several seconds. "It might be best if you ask her that yourself. She can be trusted, though, I assure you."

Her brother just nodded. "Well, guess we should get going."

"Thank you, Mayor," Gretel said, shaking the man's hand once again before retrieving her leather coat.

"I hope you find something," he said in farewell, reaching into his pocket to hand her half their payment. "It's time this nightmare ended."

"On that," Hansel sighed. "We can agree."

Together, the siblings walked out of the office to regroup with Ben and Edward, eager to get to this cottage and learn just what exactly the mayor considered to be strange in that cottage, and wondering just what this witch had to make the mayor think that a baby or more had been in there.

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_**Review, please! Reviews let me know that you wish for more!  
**_


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **_**I got the impression that Edward doesn't talk a whole lot, so he doesn't have much dialogue at all. **_

_**There are mentions of some of the content from my Hansel/Gretel one-shot **_**"Resisting Temptation"**_**.**_

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The deeper into the forest Hansel, Gretel, Ben, and Edward went, the more uneasy Hansel became.

Upon heading east towards the supposed witch's abandoned cottage, he'd been acutely uneasy about it all. It felt as if he was being followed by something dark, something dangerous and out for blood, and occasionally he'd look around for any sign that they were being followed but they appeared to be alone. Something was nagging at him, making him lose his focus, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what the problem was that was making him less than comfortable. Whatever was out there in that cottage, it wasn't good, of that Hansel knew for sure.

"Are we getting close?" Hansel asked Ben, glancing at the boy holding the map.

He nodded. "There's a stream up ahead, and after that we should be able to see the cottage. Hey, why would a witch abandon their home? Couldn't they just kill anybody who came by?"

"Would you want to stay put if you had people wanting to roast you?" Hansel questioned, thinking the boy's question should have been common sense.

"Well, no, but it's not like it wouldn't be easy for a witch to kill a human."

Before Hansel could speak again, Gretel stepped in and said, "It's less out of fear and more out of convenience. A witch whose home has been exposed always has to watch their back and it's highly unlikely that children will venture near the area. Sometimes another more powerful witch moves into the area and chases off the resident witch. It all depends on the situation."

That was as simply put and Gretel could make it, and Hansel was relieved when Ben nodded and fell silent, having something new to think about. Just because he had been helpful did not mean that Hansel enjoyed the kid's company.

He missed the days were it was just himself and Gretel working together, missed the privacy they had. The last time he'd had any real privacy with her was while they were in the desert hunting a handful of witches, after she'd ventured away from camp to wash up by a stream that sustained itself behind some boulders. He'd noticed that something was bother her and so he followed after making it clear to Ben that the kid would not be sneaking a peak at Gretel.

After a brief exchange upon startling her, he'd approached to help wash the places on her back that she could not reach as she'd been naked only from the waist up and facing away from him – had she been entirely naked, he'd have kept his back to her, or at least would have tried not to look. In the minutes that had passed, it was difficult to remain focused on the sweat and grime rather than the softness of her fair skin. Due to the intense attraction he felt towards her, washing her back probably wasn't a wise thing to do, but it was something that they did for each other often when just cleaning up a bit, washing the spots they couldn't reach well on their own. If he suddenly told her he couldn't give her a hand or didn't even offer to help, she'd question him as to what had changed. He just had to curb his desires during those time, and he had done so then, though her periodic shivers when his roughened fingers made contact with her back didn't help any.

Gretel confessed that she believed their parents had held more secrets from them, but Hansel was quick to insist that they hadn't and stopped the topic shortly after it began, and soon after finishing washing the sweat and dirt off she fell asleep leaning back in his arms. Once he was sure she was out, he'd carried her back to camp where he laid her with him on his blanket and fell asleep with her in his arms, only able to get a real night's sleep when she was close to him. But sleep had been restless, and he dreamed about his parents, people he didn't like dreaming about.

He didn't like discussing them, not even after learning that they'd sacrificed themselves so he and Gretel could live. If anything, talking about them was more painful than it ever was, and he refused to believe that they'd kept more secrets, feeling as if he was shaming their memory somehow if he started believing that.

Hardly the perfect son growing up, Hansel had been at constant odds with his parents, going so far as to confess to Gretel that he didn't feel like he was even a member of the family. His eye color was different, his features shared no resemblance to either parent, and he didn't share any personality traits. Gretel always accused him of being silly before dragging him into some game, making him forget his gripes for a time, but as they became older and his love for her grew beyond what a brother should feel for his sister, his doubts of their relation grew, though there was really no solid evidence to prove that he was anything but her twin brother. In fact, their twin birthmarks seemed to prove the fact that they were related.

He remembered the day when they were children that they'd asked their mother why they had similar crescent birthmarks on the back of their right shoulders. She'd said nothing for several seconds, looked almost guilty for a moment, before saying that it was just something that twins sometimes shared. Surely that and the fact that both he and Gretel were immune to dark magic proved that they were related.

"I think I see it!" Ben announced excitedly, pointing to the right as they crossed the stream.

Sure enough, just beyond the thick trees was the ramshackle cottage, heavily damaged from the weather that had swept through over the last twenty-nine years. It certainly looked like it was abandoned, but so did some of the other homes witches resided in. Despite its increasingly rough appearance as they drew closer, there was still a possibility that a witch was living there.

"Ben, Edward, check out the property around the house and the shed back there while Gretel and I go inside," instructed Hansel, readying his shotgun as Gretel adjusted her crossbow in her hands.

Ben frowned. "Why do I gotta go with the troll?"

In response, Edward scowled and stalked towards the boy a few steps, making Ben jump back.

"I mean, sure! No problem!" he amended with a nervous smile.

Gretel rolled her eyes and patted the large troll on the arm. "Play nice, you two."

That was a tall order.

Edward didn't like anyone but Gretel since she was the witch who happened to save his life. Had she not have been kind to him or saved him, Hansel doubted the big guy would have insisted on serving her and tagging along. As long as the troll didn't give them trouble, Hansel didn't really care about him one way or the other since he mostly kept out of the way. Hell, he'd go so far as saying he liked the troll more than Ben simply because he wasn't as annoying as the kid and didn't flirt with Gretel.

The kid and the troll stalked off to patrol around the cottage, and Hansel looked to Gretel. "I've got your back."

With a half-smile, she proceeded to the front of the house with her crossbow raised, ready for anything or nothing at all.

Hansel followed a few feet behind, giving her enough space to jump back if she needed to, but remained close enough to help her if she needed it.

The door was cracked open so Gretel took a moment to look at what she could see through the crack before taking a deep breath and kicking the door open the rest of the way. She stepped inside quickly, sweeping her weapon in an arch to her left while Hansel moved in on her right, slowly moving through the small house.

It was rather obvious that the place had been the home of a witch judging from the pile of bones belonging to both humans and animals in the far corner near the doorway and various markings engraved into the walls, along with small bottles filled with various potions that must not have been too important. There was also a makeshift cell across the room that would have been able to hold a few kids or an adult with a little room to spare and a large fireplace with an iron spit over it that was probably used to cook the poor kids who found themselves in the witch's grasp. But the place also looked have been abandoned for as long as the mayor claimed, if not a few years longer.

"Looks clear," Gretel observed quietly, looking into a room.

Approaching a room blocked off by a tattered wool blanket, Hansel nodded to himself but said nothing. He grabbed the blanket and pulled it from its hooks, and was momentarily stunned by what he found, brows knitting in confusion.

"Hey, Sis? I think you should take a look at this," he called to his sister, stepping inside to inspect the old bassinet that had gathered dust and leaves that blew in from the open shutters.

Entering the room, she gaped at the little bassinet.

"A witch wouldn't go through the trouble of making a bassinet for their dinner," Hansel observed grimly, picking of the insanely scratchy baby blanket. Any kid who would have been wrapped in that thing would have cried it's eyes out for sure given how scratchy and rough it was.

"There was a large bloodstain on the bed in the other room," said Gretel, examining the items in the dreary nursery. "I don't think this witch stole a baby – I think she was it's mother."

"Now that's a messed up kid from the start," Hansel commented dryly, tossing the blanket back into the bassinet with pure disgust. He didn't like the feeling that formed in his gut upon touching the blanket, the acute discomfort it brought on. The whole house made him more uneasy than normal, and he just wanted to hurry up with the place and get back to town.

"Hey, look at this," Gretel said as she stepped up beside him with a piece of paper in her hand.

It was a birth certificate that didn't look official at all and had no name, but the date was what caught his eye.

Hansel said slowly, "So, a baby was born twenty-nine years ago the same day we were, and children have been taken for the past twenty-nine years? I think the mayor's got more than a simple witch problem."

Gretel nodded. "Yeah."

The alarm on Hansel's wrist began ticking quickly then, signally that it was time for his next shot, and he hurried out of the room to sit down on the porch, already feeling dizzy. Some people said that he reacted to the sugar sickness differently and that his case was severe, needing to take his injection within minutes of his wrist device going off or he'd fall unconscious and die soon after. After dealing with the sickness for so long, it became natural to him to just take the shots in his thigh and not question it all.

Breathing in slow deep breaths, he pulled a metal syringe from the small pack he carried them in and wasted no time in jamming the needle into his thigh, injecting himself with the medicine Gretel had learned to make from a doctor when they were children.

Maybe that was why he was so uneasy. It wasn't uncommon for him not to feel great even an hour before taking his injection, but he'd felt… odd the moment they neared Luxinburg, like the whole place was wrong and somewhere he shouldn't be. It was a strange feeling, and one he didn't like in the slightest.

"Are you all right, Hansel?" Gretel asked in concern, coming to sit beside him on the porch. "You've had your head in the clouds ever since we've arrived in town."

He'd been hoping she hadn't noticed.

Glancing at her, he sighed and returned the syringe to his pack. "I just want to find out why a witch has been hunting so many kids and made a deal with the town when she could've just gone somewhere else."

She said nothing for a moment. "I know you don't like talking about our parents, but… maybe it has something to do with our mother."

"It doesn't," he replied curtly, rising to his feet and heading back inside to search for clues.

"That baby was born the same day as us, Hansel," she reminded him insistently, following. "You just said that this is more than a simple witch problem."

He had, but now he was wishing he'd kept his mouth shut. "Maybe the witch had a bone to pick with our mother and thought that abducting kids on our birthday and onward was somehow funny."

"That's it? That's your theory?" she asked incredulously. "If that were they case, why didn't she stop when our mother was burned? Why go through the trouble of making a deal with the town so that she could take these specific kids? If what you say is true, she could have just gone somewhere else to get at our mother."

"Maybe she liked the scenery," he suggested, throwing his arms up.

"Well, then explain this," she demanded, picking up the makeshift birth certificate and shoving it into his hands. "Explain the baby born the same day we were."

Not bothering to even look at it, he countered, "How do we even know this is real or that a baby was ever even born? Witches lie, Gretel. This could have all been a hoax to screw with the heads of anyone who dropped by, and the birthday is just a coincidence. Witches don't start families, Gretel, they tear them apart."

"Our mother started a family," she started, but was cut off by his bitter chuckle.

"Yeah, and look at her great family – she was torched, our father was hung, I've got to take shots around the clock, and you're one of _them_." Gretel visibly shrunk away, her doe eyes watering, and Hansel immediately regretted his choice of words.

"One of _them_?" she repeated in a small voice, hurt. "That's what you think of me?"

"No, no, no," he said in a rush, stepping in front of her and putting his hands on her arms. "I didn't mean it like that."

She turned her eyes to her boots and tried to pull away, but he held tight to her arms. "And you never say things you don't mean, right."

He sighed.

The thing was, he really didn't mean to say what he had, he was just frustrated with the conversation, uncomfortable with the environment, and confused with what they'd found in the witch's cottage. He just said what he thought would end the topic, and ended up shoving his foot in his mouth and hurting Gretel's feelings by bringing up such a touchy subject for her.

The revelation that she was a white witch was still something she was learning to live with, something she was uncomfortable with. Apart from Mina, they'd only ever encountered dark witches and thus they were the only ones she compared herself to. She was nothing like them though, and though he assured her of that time and time again, she feared that she might become like them someday. The weight of carrying on their mother's magical ways weighed heavily on her shoulders, and he'd done nothing in what he said to lessen that weight.

"Look at me." When she didn't, he hooked his fingers under her chin and gently drew her eyes back to him. "You're a white witch, not one of the dark witches we hunt, okay? If you were, you'd be the ugliest hag in the world with a nasty disposition, not a beautiful woman trying to save a bunch of kids."

A light blush colored her fair cheeks and a small smile graced her full lips, making him smile in return in relief. Upsetting her always hurt him, and most of the time she had every reason to walk off on him in anger, but she never did. She always forgave him, even when he didn't deserve it.

Slipping her arms around his waist, she pressed herself against him in a tight hug, resting her head against his shoulder. He promptly enveloped her with one arm holding her to him and the hand of his other smoothing down her braided hair, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"I love you, Gretel, witch or not," he assured her softly, the reality of his words known only to him. He loved her as a woman he wanted but couldn't have, and she could never know that.

She snuggled deeper into his arms, oblivious to the pained expression in his grey eyes as he held her tighter. "I love you, too."

Never would she know how much it meant to him to hear her say that, even if she only meant it as his sister.

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_**Review, please! Reviews let me know that you wish for more!**_


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **_**A buddy of mine was discussing with me my decision to refer to men in this fic who practice or were born with the ability to use white/dark magic as witches instead of calling them wizards or warlocks, and I thought it might be a good thing to explain here.**_

_**Basically, the term warlock is used more by TV shows and movies and means "oath breaker". As for the term wizard, the first thing that comes to my mind with that term are kids shows and **_**"Harry Potter"**_**. In some forms of fiction and lore, the term "witch" is used to describe both men and women who practiced or were accused of practicing magic, and is not always gender specific. It seemed simpler in the long run to just refer to both men and women as witches. **_

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Upon returning to Luxinburg, Gretel had been eager to speak with this so-called witch expert, Tabitha, and was genuinely disappointed when she discovered that she'd left while they were gone to gather herbs and plants that grew deep in the woods – apparently she was the town doctor, which was surprising since she was a woman. She wanted to figure out if this woman knew anything that might help them, as did Hansel.

Idly, she looked over at her brother while he went over some papers with Ben in one of the two rooms they'd rented during their time in Luxinburg.

Even now he looked tense and uncomfortable, rubbing at his temples on occasion as his headache plagued him. She'd assumed it had something to do with the sugar sickness since that sometimes gave him headaches, but she was growing more unsure by the minute. It wasn't just a headache bothering him, but also irritability, an ill stomach, and other small details that were subtle but hard not to notice in her eyes. The sickness had never affected him in such a way before, nor did she remember him being so uptight during a hunt. Something was bothering him to the degree that he'd been harsh with her in the witch's cottage.

Turning her eyes back to her work of mixing his medicine – he was the one who was sick, but he was lousy at mixing medicines of any kind – she couldn't help but feel a twinge of pain tug at her heart in response to the memory of his words.

"… _and you're one of them."_

He knew how insecure she was about being a witch and he'd thrown that insecurity right in her face to pull the conversation in his favor. At the time, she'd been torn between crying and slapping him, but she'd settled on silence. It wasn't often that Hansel said something that hurt her, something that made her want to storm off and cry. Of all the men in the world, he was the only one who could genuinely upset her. Others could call her a whore or a bitch and she would feel little more than irritation, but if Hansel were to say something like that to her she wasn't sure if she'd be able to hold it together.

Immediately after saying something that hurt her so deeply, however, Hansel quickly apologized, looking almost as hurt by what he said as she was whilst offering words of comfort and an apology. Gretel wouldn't be wrong to hold a grudge against him for a time or seek to be away from him while she was upset, but she always forgave him because she knew him and knew that in his heart he didn't mean to be so hurtful. Hansel had a bad habit of saying whatever he knew would hurt her in order to end a topic he was acutely uncomfortable with, and most often that was when she insisted they speak of their parents. So she forgave him each time, and it was all because she loved him so much more than a sister should.

He wasn't just another man to her, wasn't just a brother she could ignore when he lost his temper – he was Hansel, a man who to her was in a category all his own. She could never trust a man the way she trusted Hansel, could never love a man like she loved him, and could never be happy with anyone else but him. She longed for a family of her own and the day where they wouldn't have to hunt witches anymore, but because the desire to hunt witches would never fade she feared no man would ever want to marry her even if she came to long for someone other than her brother.

Maybe if Hansel weren't her brother…

Gretel bit down hard on her tongue to draw her attention away from that thought before it ever truly formed. Thinking about things like that would only make resisting him so much harder than it already was.

"Can witches even have babies?" Ben asked out of nowhere.

Gretel and Hansel both turned their eyes to the kid.

"I'm no expert on witch physiology, but I'm guessing everything works the same for them as it would a human woman," commented Hansel dryly, not really wanting to get into it with him or come out and say that they knew for certain that witches could have children.

Ben was unaware that Hansel and Gretel's mother was a witch, and it wasn't something they wanted him to know just yet when it was such a touchy subject for them. They lied about the Book of Protection, claiming that they found it in a witch's lair, and they came up with an excuse for other things.

One thing Gretel knew she'd have to explain sooner or later, however, was the fact that she'd taken Muriel's wand and that it regularly responded to her touch by glowing a bright orange. Having it wasn't what would piss off Hansel, it was the not telling him that she had it that would anger him. By all rights she should destroy the thing, but she was curious and whenever she managed to sneak off while everyone slept she would try to use it, but never could she manage anything more than a little sputter of magic from the wand. What she needed was her mother to teach her the art of white magic, but unfortunately she was on her own.

"No, I didn't mean it like _that_," Ben replied, cheeks reddening. "I mean, what man would want to get that close to a witch? Mina was pretty, yeah, but she was a white witch – dark witches are all disgusting and evil."

Gretel nodded slowly. "He's got a point, Hansel. I can't see men lining up to willingly bed a dark witch."

Expression turning thoughtful, Hansel sat silently for a few seconds and then said, "Let's forget about these missing kids for a second and go back to when all this started. We've got a witch that had a baby boy and an unofficial birth certificate for him – no name – along with a cell big enough for a bunch of kids or one or two adults and the bones of both adults and children in a corner. What does that tell us?"

Ben hesitated. "That… the kids were just food and the adults were for some other purpose?"

"She was kidnapping men in order to become pregnant," Gretel added, straining the foggy liquid that was Hansel's medicine into the metal syringes.

"Meaning she was pretty damn desperate for a baby," Hansel concluded. "Question is why, and where are she and her son now?"

Setting each filled syringe to the side, Gretel pursed her lips in thought, genuinely uncertain. She'd never heard of dark witches kidnapping and raping men in an attempt to conceive a child. It was more than a little disconcerting to say the least. "There could be some kind of ritual where she needs as many kids as possible, or perhaps a Sabbath takes place during June."

"But where does this son of hers come into play?" asked Ben, confused.

Hansel sighed, uncertain and leaning back in his chair. "I have no idea."

"Could he be a witch? Maybe she's training him or something."

At that, Hansel said with absolute certainty, "Men can't become witches and they aren't born ones either. It's a woman thing."

Ben looked to Gretel and she nodded in agreement with her brother.

Never had they run into a male witch, and though Gretel was a white witch, Hansel did not share that family trait. Yes, he was immune to dark magic but only because their mother had put a protection spell on them or something. Unless there was some male witch out there that they didn't know about, they firmly believed that there was no such thing as a male witch.

Placing the full syringes back into Hansel's pack, she joined them at the table and handed it to him.

He gave her a smile before strapping the pack to his belt and thigh.

"Once Tabitha returns we should go to her immediately," suggested Gretel. "If what the mayor says is true, she might have a better idea of what's going on around here."

"Can I come?" Ben asked, a hopeful smile on his face.

Hansel quickly said without looking up from some of the mayor's notes, "No."

Face falling, Ben sighed and went back to sorting through the information the mayor had gathered over the years, trying to find a pattern.

If it were up to Gretel, she would happily start bringing the boy to meetings with people of importance – mayors, sheriffs, other people – but Hansel put his foot down on that matter. There was too much that could be brought up during those conversations, such as their mother and heritage, and Hansel didn't feel that it was something that Ben should find out from anyone but them. He was going to have to be told eventually, but for now they'd keep him in the dark for as long as they needed.

Gretel thought her brother was being a little too paranoid because she couldn't see everyone discovering what she and her mother were unless they were told, but there was always the chance for a rumor to spread and she didn't argue with him when his paranoia was based off his constant desire to protect her from any kind of harm. It was touching, his protectiveness, if not annoying as well.

"Hansel? You okay?"

At Ben's sudden question, Gretel looked to her brother and frowned. Hansel had gone a shade pale, pinching the bridge of his nose in discomfort.

Clearing his throat, Hansel straightened and nodded. "Yeah, fine. A headache, that's all."

Ben appeared to buy it, but Gretel wasn't quite as convinced and asked the boy as she pulled some money from her bag, "I think I saw a vender down the street selling apples. Could you go buy us some?"

Nodding, he got to his feet and took the money Gretel held out to him before grabbing his coat and heading out to get some apples.

As soon as they were alone, Hansel sighed and slouched forward with his elbows on the table, rubbing at his temples. "Wasn't lying, you know. I do have a headache."

"Never thought you were lying," she assured him, leaning against the table beside him. "But that's not the only thing bothering you, is it?"

Glancing up at her with his grey eyes, he looked ready to argue but merely shook his head after a moment. "You said you grabbed a few things from the cottage?"

"Yeah, the birth certificate, the baby blanket because it had an herbal smell to it, a journal that's in some other language, and a few other things."

"Hand me that blanket, would you?"

Nodding, she retrieved the blanket and gave it to him, confused when he held it to his nose.

Face scrunching up, coughing, he rose suddenly to his feet and through the blanket into the fireplace before working quickly to start a fire. He kept rubbing at his eyes as a small flame was started on the log, growing in intensity to engulf the rough blanket.

"Hansel, what are you doing?" she demanded, perplexed.

"The smell," he explained, walking away from the fireplace when he was satisfied. "It was giving me a headache and making me nauseous."

She couldn't understand why it had made him feel that way given that to her and Ben in had merely smelled a little bad with a scent almost akin to rosemary. It was because of the herbal smell that she'd chosen to bring it back with them. Maybe some sort of potion had been spread over the blanket, but now they would never know. Considering how Hansel was reacting to the smell, she wasn't upset that he'd burned it.

Walking up behind him, Gretel placed her hand on his muscular back, moving it up and down soothingly before she felt the tension slowly ebb away in response to her touch.

This place wasn't good for her brother, that much was painfully obvious.

"In a few days, we'll leave, I promise," she said softly, moving her arms to embrace him from behind, resting her forehead on the back of his shoulder.

Hansel placed his hands over hers where they interlaced in front of him, holding them tight. For a time, they just stayed as they were, taking comfort in each other's presence.

All of a sudden, Ben came rushing back in, panting, and the two broke apart, a flush of embarrassment on Gretel's cheeks.

"That was fast," Hansel commented, though he took notice that Ben had no fruit with him.

"Tabitha just got back – Mayor Worthington sent her our way," he explained in a rush, looking back down the hall then to them for a second, he asked, "Can she come in or do you want to meet at her home or what?"

"Let her in," Gretel said without hesitation, her and Hansel's mood perking up a fraction. "And, uh, Ben…"

He sighed. "I know, I know. You'll come get me when you guys are done."

Stepping back, Ben allowed the woman waiting outside to come in before shutting the door as he went to find something to occupy himself with.

Gretel had expected the witch expert to be an elderly woman littered with wrinkles and grimy hair because in her experience people who claimed to be and expert were normally pretty rough looking to say the least. But this woman was tall with lightly graying blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a wide grin on her face. She was lovely, and definitely not what she'd expected.

"My God, it's been too long!" Tabitha explained, hurrying forward and wrapping her arms tightly around Gretel.

"Uh?..." Gretel looked to Hansel in confusion, and he mirrored her expression before jolting when the woman moved to hug him as well just as tightly.

Taking a step back, Tabitha beamed at them with a teary smile. "You two have grown up so much! Last time I saw you two you were barely four years old. And my, were you little terrors! Adrianna was half out of her mind when you both began throwing mud at each other."

Gretel's browned eyes widened, and she asked, "You knew our mother?"

"Yes. When I heard she'd been burned and Philip hung… well, I went to Augsburg to see if you two had been killed, but no children had been found. When I heard that a town miles away had taken you in, I was so relieved," she explained, a note of sadness in her voice. "Adrianna was an amazing mentor. She shouldn't have died like some dark witch."

Hansel straightened, uncrossing his arms. "You knew she was a witch?"

Tabitha nodded. "Yes. I met her by accident, but she knew my mother who was also a white witch and recognized me. Took me under her wing for a few years. Once I was old enough to go out on my own, we went our separate ways but continued to visit each other. It wasn't long after I went out on my own that she met Philip and started a family, which I was quite ecstatic about – it's so hard for white witches to find love, you understand." Losing track of things, she smiled happily and looked to each of them before looking at Gretel. "You look so much like your mother, sweetheart."

Touched by the compliment, Gretel briefly turned her eyes to the ground before nodding. She only vaguely remembered what her mother looked like, but took Tabitha's word for it. "Thank you."

Tabitha then turned her sky blue eyes to Hansel, her smile turning almost relieved. "Hansel," she started, stepping forward to get a better look at him. "You do not know how relieved I've been to hear that you've been helping Gretel kill dark witches as opposed to helping them try to kill her. We were all worried about where you would end up for a while."

Hansel frowned and both he and Gretel looked at each other in utter confusion. He wasn't helping her fight dark witches, they were working together, always had been. Neither of them were in charge – they worked as a team, each calling the shots in different scenarios. And what was this nonsense about fearing he'd be helping the dark witches try to kill Gretel and worrying about where he'd end up?

"Why would our parents be worried about where I'd end up?" Hansel asked, brows knit together.

At this, Tabitha's smile faltered. "_Your _parents?"

He nodded at her seemingly ridiculous need for clarification. "Yes, Gretel's and my father and mother – Philip and Adrianna."

"Oh, my Lord, she never told you," Tabitha stammered, cheeks reddening nervously as she moved to sit down at the table. "I asked her the last time I saw her when she planned on telling you two and she always said soon… she would tell you soon."

"Tell us _what_?" Gretel demanded.

Tucking an errant strand of light blond hair behind her ear, she asked, "How much do you know about Adrianna?"

Gretel answered, "Only that she was the most powerful grand white witch, and that the night before she was burned she cast a spell on us to protect us from dark magic before father took us into the woods to keep us safe. Other than that, we'd always assumed we were a normal family."

"So she told you nothing of who you two are," Tabitha summed up irritably before mumbling, "Damn you, Adrianna."

Hansel, frustrated, demanded loudly, "What didn't she tell us?"

The woman sighed, rubbing her fingers over her mouth anxiously for a few seconds. She opened her mouth to speak but promptly shut it. At last, she replied slowly, "You two… you aren't brother and sister."

Hansel and Gretel blinked, sharing mutual looks of disbelief.

"We're twins," Hansel insisted, but Tabitha shook her head.

"You were born the same hour, but you're not related."

"We have the same birthmarks," Gretel pointed out.

"Which singles you two out as the two witches from a prophesy," she replied.

Hansel once again crossed his arms and took a step forward. "What prophesy? And what the hell makes you think we aren't brother and sister?"

"Sit, please," implored Tabitha. "It'll be easier to take in if you both sit down."

They hesitated before taking a seat across from the white witch, waiting for her to explain herself.

For the next half hour, Tabitha went into incredible detail about the prophesy and how it consisted of two witches who were born in the same hour but were opposites – male and female, good and evil, one born to a white witch and the other to a dark witch, and the like. Alone, they were powerful, but together the two could do great good or commit horrific acts of evil.

Given all they'd come to learn about witches, the thought of this kind of prophesy was believable, but that they were the two it mentioned was not.

Tabitha explained that upon hearing a rumor of a baby in the forest she went to investigate and came upon the cottage of a dark witch. The witch wasn't there, but a baby boy was, one who had a crescent shaped birthmark on his right shoulder and an unofficial birth certificate stating that he was born the day Gretel was. She said that she knew for certain that he was the boy mentioned in the prophesy and wasted no time in snatching him from his bassinet that had been soaked with a variety of potions and take him to Adrianna.

It was decided that Adrianna and Philip would take him as their own and lead him and Gretel to believe that they were twins in order to protect them from dark witches, but that they'd be told the truth once they were old enough to understand the seriousness of their situation. Why the grand white witch never told them was beyond Tabitha and she had no answers for it.

Hansel pointed out that they were both immune to dark magic, and Tabitha replied that because he was technically a dark witch himself he was immune to dark magic outside his family but was vulnerable to white magic, just as Gretel was immune to white magic outside her family and, prior to Adrianna's spell, had been vulnerable to dark magic. Adrianna had always planned to have Gretel protected against dark magic until she told the two the truth about who they were and taught them how to best use their abilities, because the fact that they were opposite witches was what made them so important – their powers were supposed to work on each other when the other was in need or needed the aid of a dark or white witch. Gretel being protected against dark magic might help her against other dark witches, but it hindered her and Hansel's ability to work together at full capacity.

It was all enough to give Gretel a headache and she kept coming up with reasons in her head to counter what Tabitha was telling them, only to find truth in the older woman's words. Hansel didn't look anything like her, Philip, or Adrianna, and he held no characteristics of either parent. He was immune to dark magic but susceptible to white magic, and while she wasn't sure if she was immune to the white magic of unrelated witches she knew that had her mother not cast that spell on her she'd be vulnerable to dark magic. What they found in that cottage – the cottage where Tabitha had taken an infant boy – only further confirmed the woman's claims.

Hansel wasn't her brother and wasn't even related to her. Adrianna and Philip had lied to protect them until they were old enough to understand. The question was why had they never been told?

"We were still kids when they died, but we would have been smart enough to grasp what was going on. Why didn't they ever say anything?" Gretel asked Tabitha, glancing at Hansel for his reaction.

Throughout the whole conversation he'd been as silent as the dead, listening and barely nodding on occasion, leaving it to Gretel to ask the questions. Granted she generally did a lot of the talking unless it was an interrogation, but it wasn't like him to be so quiet. Then again, judging by the tense set of his jaw, pursed lips, and his eyes locked on the table, it was clear that his thoughts were ringing loud in his ears. To anyone else he would just look rightfully irritated, maybe a little cranky, but Gretel knew better. Even though she wasn't his blood, they'd been together since infancy – she knew him better than anyone else alive. A slight expression spoke volumes to her, and his expression now was screaming at her.

Hansel wasn't even close to being okay with all of this, and Gretel was left wondering just when his control was going to snap.

"Truthfully, I can't explain why Adrianna never told you both the truth," Tabitha admitted sincerely. "She told me whenever we met you'd be told once you were eight, then it changed to nine, and then, well, and then they were killed and you both were gone. The only explanation I can come up with is that… maybe she thought the truth would hurt too much, that maybe you wouldn't see yourselves as a family."

Hansel snorted indignantly, the first sound he'd made in a while, and rose to his feet to stare into the fireplace.

As it was, Gretel had to bite back her own retort.

Though shocked and reeling from the revelation, a part of her was almost giddy with the news. He wasn't her brother, meaning that the thoughts and feelings she felt for him weren't that of some sister with a twisted mind, but of a woman who genuinely loved a man she'd been with all her life. The feelings weren't wrong, they were right, natural, and okay to be felt… perhaps even expressed.

Unless Hansel still saw her as his sister, if that was all he could see her as.

Either way, now was not the time to be dwelling on feelings of the heart. They had more serious matters to discuss.

"Do you think the witch stealing so many children is Hansel's…" she trailed off, seeing him tense. "Do you think it's _her_?"

Tabitha nodded. "It's a very real possibility, though if it is her work she's not doing it alone. On the occasion where I've ventured out to get a good look at exactly what witch is coming into town to steal children in an effort to try to protect the kids, I've noticed at least four different witches, each as hideous as the last, with the exception of one whom I recognized as the sister of the grand dark witch you two killed not too long ago."

That got Hansel's attention and he twisted around to look at the woman. "Muriel had a sister?"

"Yes, an older sister by the name Melinda, the most powerful dark witch of all," she explained. "Adrianna and her crossed paths once during a blood moon before either of you were born, and Adrianna just barely got away with her heart still in her chest. The only one who truly challenged her was Melinda. When at first I heard that Muriel was after your heart, Gretel, I feared that she'd figured out what you two were, but then I discovered that Muriel was acting on her own and that the two of you were still being called siblings, so I knew the truth of your existence was intact. It's a wonder you've yet to cross paths with her, given the fate of Muriel, but it probably isn't a good sign."

"Any reason Melinda would be orchestrating the abductions over the years?" Hansel questioned.

"I have a theory," Tabitha replied, taking a peek at a few papers. "My guess is that you're mother belongs to Melinda's coven and was instructed to try to conceive the boy from the prophesy. It might have been just her or the others in the coven, but regardless of who gave birth it would be Melinda pulling the strings on everything. It's not secrete to most witches that she's had her eyes on getting the boy from the prophesy, and, if at all possible, the girl too. Even she had control on one or both of you, she'd be nearly unstoppable. Another reason I took you, Hansel – I couldn't let her get her hands on you.

"As for the children, it might have started out as a ploy to guilt whoever had taken you into returning you – had they known it was me, the dark witches would surely have tortured me into revealing your location," she added. "But I think they may be catching on to the fact that perhaps you two are not blood related."

"What makes you say that?" asked Gretel.

"Since the death of Muriel, the witches have become more violent with the kidnappings and putting on a bit of a show about it. Snatching Rebecca – the mayor's daughter – was probably something they knew he wouldn't stand for, and saw it as a way to lure you here. Had I… had I suspected this sooner I'd have kept a closer watch on her."

Cocking her head, Gretel asked gently, "You and the mayor are close?"

Tabitha nodded sadly. "We met not long after I first passed through Luxinburg. His father was a good man, a smart man, and it didn't take him long to discover that there was something not quite right about me, but in a good way. He nearly had me burned when he discovered I was a witch, though, until his son convinced him otherwise after seeing me use my magic to aid in healing an injury of his. I've more or less been the town doctor ever since. The mayor's father almost always listened to my judgment, save for on the day he died, and the mayor comes to me if there is anything witch related going on as well as to just visit me with Rebecca. Those two are the closest thing to family that I have left."

For the first time during the whole visit, Hansel appeared sympathetic to the woman and pointed out grimly, "There's a chance the little girl might already be dead."

She shook her head. "I don't think so. I think they take so many children to stock up for the year or perhaps to even trade with other witches. Later in the year, witches have a greater tendency to cross paths a good distance from here for roughly a week's time. It's possible that some of the children are being kept alive to be traded for rare herbs, ingredients, and potions."

"A child slave trade?" Hansel asked, to which Tabitha nodded. "This just gets better and better."

He picked up his coat then and shrugged it onto his shoulders, grabbing a few bills from one of their packs.

Frowning, Gretel asked, "Where are you going?"

"Out for a stiff drink."

"Right now? Hansel, we've got a lot to discuss and –"

"I've heard enough, Gretel!" he snapped angrily, his fragile control fracturing. "I just found out that you're not my sister and I was never a part of _your_ family, that not only do dark male witches exist but I'm supposed to be the most powerful one in some god damn prophesy that involves both of us, and that these kids are being taken because Tabitha snatched me up as a baby!" he said loudly, close to shouting. "Now, I'm going to go have a drink. You two, feel free to chat."

With that being said, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him with enough force to make Gretel flinch.

Worrying on her lower lip, Gretel made to stand and go after him when Tabitha put her hand gently on her arm, stopping her.

"Let him be a lone for a while," instructed Tabitha in a motherly tone. "I did just throw a lot of information your way. A strong drink might do him some good."

"Yes, except that when Hansel gets drunk I usually find myself sleeping alone because he's off with some woman he found while drinking," she said bitterly, recalling the times she'd pretended to be asleep after he snuck back into their room before crawling into bed with her, something he only ever did when they longed for companionship or on the nights he fooled around with some strange woman.

His excursions always stung, but it was hard to me angry with him for seeking out sex. As his sister, it wasn't her right to call him out on it like he belonged to her, but now, after learning the truth, maybe it wouldn't have hurt to have said something at least once.

Reading something in her expression, Tabitha offered a sad smile. "Forgive me if I'm misinterpreting, but… you don't see him as you're brother, do you?"

Gretel stared at her with guilty eyes, but said nothing.

"I thought as much. You would not sound so bitter and jealous when Hansel has another woman on his arm if you only thought of him as your brother."

"It's not that we… I mean, we aren't…" she paused to gather her thoughts, releasing a heavy sigh. "He doesn't know how I feel in part because I've made sure that he doesn't know. As far as he or I knew, we were twins – confessing that I care to the degree that I do would have seemed twisted, sick, and wrong, and it would have ruined the relationship we already had."

"And now that you know you aren't related?" she ventured to ask.

A reply did not come immediately. "I honestly don't know. I know where _I _would like us to go, but he might always see me as his sister. And I can live with that – do I like it? No, but for him I can grin and move on with things as I always have. Besides, now is hardly the time for confessions – there's too much at stake and kids are missing, not to mention if what you say about Melinda is true then we're going to have our hands full."

"Perhaps that makes the time perfect for confessions," countered Tabitha gently. Turning to face her better, she added, "Gretel, I cannot stress to you how hard it is for white witches to find love. The notion that we are witches is sometimes all that is needed to condemn us without listening to the facts that we are good. What makes what you feel for Hansel so different is that he knows you're a witch and still cares, and you now know that he is a dark witch with a good heart but you still obviously care. I can't speak for Hansel in regards to how he feels about you, but whatever you two have… it's rare. But I would at least let him know that the option for something more between you is available. He's just had a lot thrown at him – knowing that you'll be there for him in whatever capacity might make this revelation that he's a dark witch easier to swallow."

Gretel turned her eyes to the window, wishing she could see the stars from her position. She always liked staring up at the stars.

Would revealing to Hansel the true depth of her feelings sooner rather than later be best?

The news that she was a white witch had shaken her, but it wasn't the end of the world. Yes, she was a witch, but a good one from a good family. A white witch's powers were used for good, not evil, and though she feared that one day she might turn into a dark witch, Hansel was there to tell her otherwise – that she wasn't horrifically ugly and evil, but rather she was beautiful and good.

The revelation that he was a dark witch, however, was more than likely more life altering. The only witches he'd be able to compare himself to would be dark witches, and those examples hardly inspired a positive outlook on life. But Gretel knew him, grew up with him, and saw him at his best and at his worse. He had his flaws, but he was a good man with a good heart. Nothing about him screamed evil, and surely she wouldn't love someone who was.

They were both victims of their heritage, victims of power they never asked for nor ever wanted. But that was fate, and fate could be crueler than any witch.

Perhaps Tabitha was right about going to Hansel and telling him how she felt at least to some degree. He needed to know that no matter what, she was and always would be there for him, that she loved him not matter what he was.

For now, though, she would let him have a few drinks before making sure he didn't go off with some woman. She and Tabitha needed to discuss a course of action, and later when she found Hansel or in the morning she would relay what they had discussed with him.

Gretel just hoped that when she did go looking for him, she found him before he was with another woman.

* * *

_**Review please! Reviews let me know you wish for more!**_

_**It seemed a bit repetitive to basically rewrite the dialog in regards to the prophesy and Hansel being taken away from a dark witch as a baby that was essentially covered in the first chapter, so that's why I wrote this chapter the way I did.**_


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